Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I’m weary of all the bowling photo-ops.

Sure, some people bowl in  Wisconsin. There were two bowling alleys in my town when I was growing up.  One has closed now.   My sisters sometimes meet their friends at the other one when they’re home for holidays or family celebrations, but they never bowl.

My parents never bowled, but my mother spent every Saturday morning taking her daughters to the public library. People in Wisconsin read, too.

Or the campaign could stand in front of one of the shuttered elementary schools that have been closed because of budget cuts or the remaining open school where class sizes are much larger and the school nurse has been pink slipped.

Or they could pose in front of one of the empty small factories where my niece and sister-in-law used to work before their jobs got outsourced.

Or there’s the local hospital, where I was born and my father died, one floor apart.  It’s still open against the odds, though as my mother aged, her health care became more and more random as doctor after doctor came and went, finding little to keep them in rural Wisconsin.

It’s been great to hear newscasters speaking of the landmarks of my childhood.

I just wish that the campaigns were talking more about my people.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I deeply appreciate the attention on the complex journey of being “First”.  I appreciate the acknowledgement that first generation students are survivors.

Yet I struggle with the sense that  “survivor” implies victimhood.  Or perhaps, I struggle with how we can generate conversation about the challenges (clearly, often created by policies and practices that work against the interests of these students ) as well as the many strengths that First Generation students bring to our classrooms.

And I’d welcome more attention on the positive work ethic, the straightforwardness, the resiliency and the many other positive attributes of many First-Generation students, as these are things that all students (and their faculty) would do well to emulate.

I’ll be ordering the book today.   Does anyone want to read it together (virtually)?

First is the cluelessness of middle-class parents who, while they may have business savvy, cannot imagine “inclusion” that extends beyond offering poor kids charity.

Second is the taken-for-granted assumption that parents’ role in schools is to raise boatloads of money in their own kids’ schools rather than working for more equitable and generous funding for all schools.

And then there is the simplistic and sexist narrative of savvy white mom against poor moms of color, as if this is a personal cat fight and not a deeply structural problem.

And finally there are the multiple comments from readers that vilify poor parents who, writers claim,  must simply not be budgeting well, if they can’t afford the fund-raisers created by the middle-class moms.

As one of the scholars interviewed for the article notes, “it’s never just about the cupcake”.

*****

In class, my students sometimes vent about the lack of “parent involvement” in their internships,  and a few turns into the conversation, it becomes clear that they’re assuming that all schools can and should have parent volunteers.   The subtext is that teachers are owed the volunteer time of the parents of kids in the classroom (and another few conversational turns make clear that they’re really talking about moms, so we have that conversation, too).

I challenge my students to imagine an architectural office in which it’s take for granted that in order to get full services, clients will have to send their parents  to run copies, do clerical work, raise funds for supplies, and stage annual “architect appreciation days” in which architects get special snacks and maybe car washes.

…and that these volunteer services are,  in fact, essential for the architects to do the most basic elements of their jobs.

They eventually giggle nervously at the idea.

Everyone understands that access to basic resources to do the job isn’t the clients’ problem.

And I know, I know, clients are paying for all of those things via fees. Yet they’re spared the diversion into cupcake sales and these sorts of skirmishes that are never about cupcakes but are deeply about struggles for dignity and belonging.

But I’m tired of schools – and parents — settling so easily on the support of volunteer labor and volunteer fund-raising instead of insisting that communities and states pay for the schools that they need, directly, and without all of this drama between moms, between moms and teachers, and from reporters who’d never expect readers to come in to run copies as a condition of access to their daily newspaper.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Has anyone used any of these lessons? Are there other resources like this out there that we can share?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.